James Christie II (1773–1831) assumed management of the auction house after his father’s death in 1803, becoming an expert on ancient Greek and Italian vases and sculpture. In 1823 the firm moved to 8 King’s Street, St. James’s Square (vacated only from 1941 to 1953 because of war damage), where its headquarters remained into the 21st century. After the younger Christie’s death, his two sons, James Stirling and George Henry, took William Manson in as a partner and, later, a brother, Edward Manson. When Thomas J. Woods joined in 1859, the firm took the name Christie, Manson & Woods, and in 1940 it was reorganized as a private limited company. In part to answer competition from rival auction house Sotheby’s, the firm began expanding beyond the United Kingdom by opening offices or salesrooms in Rome (1958), Geneva (1968), and Tokyo (1969). Christie’s became a public company in 1973 and was purchased by French investor François Pinault in 1998. The firm’s first Paris auction occurred in 2001, soon after the French government removed its traditional controls over auctioneering in France.

Christie’s has a tradition of handling many historic sales. Major events include auctioning the contents of Sir Joshua Reynold’s studio (1794), selling Madame du Barry’s jewels (1795), managing the 40-day sale of the 2nd duke of Buckingham and Chandos’s Stowe House collection (1848), handling the 17-day Hamilton Palace sale of pictures (1882), selling pictures from Sir George Drummond’s collection (1919), and conducting the sale of the Ford Collection of Impressionist paintings (1980). In 1990 the firm set two records—the sale of the Badminton Cabinet for $15.2 million, then the highest price ever paid for a piece of furniture sold at auction, and the sale of Vincent van Gogh’sPortrait of Dr. Gachet for $82.5 million, then the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. (The painting’s whereabouts have been unknown since the death of the winning bidder, Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito, in 1996.)

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